Myths and Root Causes: Hunger, Population, and Development

Twenty years ago at the World Food
Conference in Rome, Frances Moore Lappe
and Joseph Collins met, and a year later
founded Food First. Today, two decades
after the Rome Conference, it’s time to
assess where we stand.

During the past twenty years, the United States and other First World
countries have sent massive amounts of food aid to Africa and other
parts of the Third World, and spent untold millions on development
assistance. Yet over 20% of the Third World’s population is
still chronically hungry. In addition to hunger and poverty, many are
caught in civil war, forced to migrate, or eke out an existence on
marginal land.

Is it hopeless? Are the problems just too great to tackle? Or do
practical alternatives exist? We at Food First believe that real and
practical alternatives do exist. All too often government policies
fail to resolve the problems they are directed at, and in many cases
actually make them worse, because of a lack of understanding of root
causes. In development policy, as in health care, treatments have been
directed at symptoms, not at the underlying diseases. For example we
send contraceptives and food aid to people who have been displaced
into arid areas unsuitable for farming, when what they need is the
redistribution of quality farmland. Or we insist that a Third World
country open its economy to imports, when it is precisely those
imports that drive local producers out of business, creating hunger
and unemployment.

The true root causes of hunger, and the policies that promote it, must
be tackled if we are to reduce hunger and poverty. Yet these root
causes and exacerbating policies are often obscured by myths that make
it difficult for us to see clearly.

MYTH: There is simply not enough food to go
aroundFACT: Growing more
food will not end hunger: people go hungry even in a world of plenty

Food First’s research over the past twenty years has
consistently shown that hunger is not caused by an absolute scarcity
of food.(1) World production of wheat, corn, rice and other grains is
sufficient to give every person on the planet 3,500 calories per
dayPmore than enough to keep healthy, without even counting other
kinds of foods. Recent World Bank projections show that this is
unlikely to change in the next twenty years.(2)

Yet a food crisis undeniably exists. 800 million people currently do
not eat enough to live a productive life. If enough food is already
produced, why is there hunger? Simply growing more food does not
eliminate hunger. Today Brazil is the third largest agricultural
exporter in the world. Yet government figures indicate that nearly 32
million people are destitute. In 1990, the richest one percent of
Brazilians had a greater percentage of national income than the
poorest fifty percent combined. The share earned by the bottom half
has declined over the last decade. Land ownershipQa measure of access
to land by poor farmersQis highly concentrated, with less than 1%
owning 43.7% of the agricultural, and in most cases, most fertile
land.(3)

In the U.S., the world’s largest agricultural exporter, an
estimated 30 million people go hungry.(4) The hungry are mostly
unemployed, or earn wages too low to feed themselves and their
families. People go hungry when they lack the opportunities necessary
to obtain adequate foodQsuch as land, jobs that pay a living wage, or
social programs that insure people have access to food.

MYTH: There’s not enough food because there are too many people
FACT: The root causes of poverty and hunger are the uprooting of
peoples from their land and livelihoods

There clearly are severe imbalances in some areas of the world between
human population density and the capacity of local economies and
environments to provide people with decent livelihoods. However, this
does not mean that there are too many people overall.

For example, population densities on the poor soils of the Chiapas
Highlands in Mexico are too high for the local farming economy. But
the origin of these population densities goes back to when Mexico was
a Spanish colony, and indigenous people were forcibly moved to the
Highland area.(5) This forced relocation of such a large number of
people onto a small area of marginal land is the root cause of their
impoverishment. Today this is one of the poorest regions of Mexico,
with rampant malnutrition and diseases of poverty like infant
diarrhea, cholera and tuberculosis. Yet nearby parts of Chiapas with
very fertile soilsQthe Grijalva Valley, the Soconusco Mountains, and
the coastal plains of the PacificQhave extremely low population
densities. These fertile lands are farmed by wealthy and in many
cases, absentee landlords, who grow cotton, beef and sugar for export
to the U.S., and corn for Mexico City, while the nearby indigenous
people continue to go hungry.(6) This pattern of too many people in
fragile areas and too few on nearby fertile soils is repeated
worldwide.

It is useful to remind ourselves that the great pre- colonial
civilizations in Africa, Asia and the Americas were all based on food
production. In every case staple foods were grown on the best lands:
generally those with deep, fertile soils, relatively flat, with good
access to water for irrigation or with regular rainfall. Areas that
were marginal for agriculture, like rainforests in Latin America or
desert edges in Africa, were less populated and not farmed
intensively.

In Africa, desert margins were inhabited by small groups of nomadic
pastoralists, whose patterns of long- distance migration were in tune
with natural variations in rainfall and vegetation growth. They lived
for millennia in a sustainable, harmonious fashion, despite the
marginality of their habitat.

Central and South American rainforests typically were populated by
small numbers of indigenous people, who lived sustainably through a
combination of hunting and gathering and active tending of rainforest
plant species underneath the forest canopy. In no case did pre-
colonial civilizations attempt to grow monocultures of annual crops in
marginal habitats.

All that changed with colonialism. Food producers were displaced from
the best lands onto ever more marginal ones, especially desert edges,
steep slopes and rain forests. Despite the achievement of
independence, this process has been accelerated in the post-colonial
era. Today the wealthy use the best lands in Africa and the Americas
to produce cotton, coffee, peanuts, tobacco, bananas, sugar cane,
cattle, and fruits and vegetables for exportQprimarily to North
America, Europe, and Japan. Meanwhile fragile regions are overcrowded,
as the expansion of export farming forced the poor into ever smaller
areas. Famines occur in Africa not because droughts are more common
today, but rather because food is now being grown in areas where
droughts were always common, the areas of irregular rainfall that were
traditionally used by nomadic pastoralists.(7)

Occasionally global market forces have led to Ttoo few people’
on marginal land as well. In the Las Lagunas area of Mexico, the
policy-driven collapse of corn prices in recent decades has made it
necessary for many members of every family to migrate and seek
employment elsewhere. The traditional agricultural system, which had
been ecologically sustainable for centuries was based on communal
labor. When the number of able-bodied workers dropped, the communal
system collapsed, leaving increased hunger and ecological devastation
in its wake.(8)

MYTH: Population control is the answer to
hunger and poverty FACT:
Only raising the living standards of the poor and increasing the
social and economic status of women will end hunger and lower
fertility rates

The world population has grown by 1.9% per year since 1950, yet grain
production has grown by 2.7% per year over the same period.(9)
Scarcity of food is not the problem. Declining birth rates mean that
the world human population will eventually stabilize itself. However,
many remain concerned that growth rates are not dropping fast enough.

In our 1977 classic, Food First: Beyond the Myth of Scarcity,
Frances Moore Lappe and Joseph Collins showed that poverty is the root
cause of population growth, and numerous studies since have reaffirmed
the basic premise that population growth accelerates with economic
destitution, as poor people need more children to get by.(10)

This is true in both rural and urban areas. The only resource a poor
farmer has to increase his or her food production is family
labor. Without sufficient income it is out of the question to buy
fertilizer and machinery, obtain more land, or hire outside labor. The
only option left to increase income is to put one’s children to
work on the family plotQthus children have value as family labor.

Shanty towns that encircle major Third World cities are filled with
people driven out of the countryside by the expansion of export
agriculture. Urban slums have few employment opportunities for
adults. Children and young adults are often the main
breadwinnersQshining shoes, selling newspapers, and prostituting
themselves. At the same time, the inadequacy of old age social
security programs encourages parents to have more children to care for
them in their old age.

Numerous studies have shown that improving living standards and
employment opportunities for women inevitably eases hunger and brings
down fertility rates much more effectively than birth control
programs.(11) As people move up in social class, children are no
longer an economic help, and, in fact, cost more money. For the
middle class, a child means medical bills, clothes, a larger house,
child care, books and tuition. And as women are better educated and
have more job opportunities, children mean more time at home, leading
to foregone income.

Despite this scientific evidence we are experiencing a resurgence of
Malthusian demands that birth control programs be greatly
expanded. Proponents of this viewpoint make two claims: socioeconomic
changes necessary to bring birth rates down will be too slow and too
late, and that there is a large unmet demand for birth control among
Third World women.(12) They conclude that it would be much simpler to
meet the demand that already exists for smaller families by promoting
birth control, rather than attempt the impossible, namely
social change.

The claim that birth rates can be reduced solely by increasing access
to contraceptives is based on faulty analyses, which incorrectly
deduces a desire for fewer children from an expressed desire for
better contraceptive methods. Recent studies confirm that people are
able to plan their families with or without modern contraceptive
methods, as they have done for thousands of years.(13) Family size
remains far more influenced by economic factors and the status of
women.

Food First supports quality reproductive health services as a basic
human right, just as we support access to all kinds of quality health
care and other ingredients for a decent life. But it is a false hope
to think that contraception will reduce population growth
significantly.

MYTH: Overpopulation in Third World countries is degrading the
environment and provoking massive migration FACT: Expansion of export
agriculture is the root cause of much environmental destruction and
migration in the Third World

Overpopulation in Third World countries is commonly thought to be
responsible for substantial destruction of the environment, including
deforestation and destruction of the rainforest, desertification, and
soil erosion. While it is indeed true that the poor in the Third
World are forced to destroy their environment in a desperate battle
for survival, the root cause is not over- population. Rather, once the
growth of export agriculture forces the poor to farm fragile lands,
environmental problems are the inevitable result.

On the desert edges in Africa, plowing the soil each season degrades
these fragile areas and expands deserts. Thus peasants are blamed for
desertification, when in fact they have been forced into a position
where they have no choice.

Throughout Central America many small farmers have been driven from
fertile Pacific lowlands up steep mountain slopes, like El Salvador,
where they try to farm thin, rocky soils that rapidly erode
away. Others are driven into rainforests, like the Atlantic Coasts of
Costa Rica and Nicaragua, where soils lose all fertility within two or
three seasons after the trees are cut. Thus peasants are blamed for
soil degradation and rainforest destruction, even as they become
poorer and more desperate by the day. (14)

Meanwhile wealthy local elites and foreign companies who export from
the best land, and displaced the poor in the first place, are rapidly
destroying their own land. Abuse of pesticides, fertilizers, heavy
machinery and large scale monocultures has led to massive pesticide
poisoning, ruined fisheries, dust storms, and lost soil fertility. As
yields drop and the debt crisis forces poor countries to export ever
larger quantities to meet debt repayment obligations, export farming
expands out from the best soils and pushes peasants off somewhat
marginal lands onto ever more infertile ones.(15)

These same forces also lead to mass migration and provoke
conflict. When people cannot make a decent living, enough to feed
themselves and their families, they have no choice but to leave,
moving to the slums of burgeoning cities like Mexico City, Lagos, or
Bangkok. Those who go to the city rarely find a job that pays a
living wage, as industry is seldom able to absorb more than a fraction
of the labor displaced from the countryside. Many people go into the
informal economy or a life of crime, while others migrate to other
countries, often in the North. This has become an enormous global
political issue, with both rich and poor nations alike now hosting
large numbers of economic refugees from neighboring countries. This
has caused a backlash and in some cases violence, against new
arrivals.

MYTH: The key to development for the Third World lies in a renewed
emphasis on exports and free-trade FACT: Free-trade policies and
export agriculture have increased poverty throughout the Third World

Policies that integrate agriculture into the world economy without
concern for the social, economic, and political effects on the poor,
have been the driving force behind hunger, poverty, population growth,
and much environmental destruction. Two current policies stand out for
their negative impacts, both forced upon Third World countries by the
United States and other First World countries, with the complicity of
local governing elites. These are the opening of economies to imports
from the North, and the promotion of export- led growth. Both are old
policies that received new impetus from the export of Reaganomics in
the 1980s, or what is called structural adjustment in the Third
World.(16)

Structural adjustment policies mandated by the World Bank, the IMF,
and U.S. AID, have required lowering or elimination of tariff
barriers, import quotas and production subsidies, all in the name of
free-trade. That has meant an influx of imported grains and other
foodstuffs at low prices. This, combined with food donations, has
undercut the ability of local farmers to compete and survive
throughout the Third World.

For example, in Burkina Faso imported wheat goes for $60 per ton
because of subsidies by exporting countries, about a third lower than
the cost to produce local grains, millet and sorghum.(17) In Costa
Rica, corn prices fell dramatically in the 1980s due to U.S. food aid
and structural adjustment mandated cuts in support prices. The number
of Costa Rican peasants who grow corn has dropped by as much as 60%,
accompanied by unprecedented social strife.(18) This pattern has been
repeated in country after country. In short, a poor farmer on the
worst soils in his or her country, must try to compete with grains
produced on the best farm land in the world, the U.S. corn belt, and
not only that, but face U.S. subsidies that make the cost of this food
cheaper than it costs to produce it.

Export promotion in Third World countries has had similar effects. For
example, during the 80s U.S. AID money was withdrawn from programs
promoting basic needs and redirected toward new export crops in 33
countries. These non-traditional exportsQmostly fresh fruits
and vegetablesQrequired large scale production, transport, and
marketing, virtually excluding the poor from any benefits. In Central
America this amounted to a massive transfer of resources from programs
favoring small farmers to ones favoring large exporters and foreign
companies.(19)

Between the effects of free trade and export promotion, the rural poor
in the Third World suffered setbacks in the 80s that generally
returned their standard of living to pre-1970 and in some cases
pre-1960 levels. Together with the end of the Cold War, this has led
to a predictable increase in conflicts and migration to Northern
countries. Mexico is a good case in point, having implemented a
multitude of IMF and World Bank structural adjustment programs. Just
six years ago the minimum wage would buy a family 94% of the basic
necessities. Today it buys only 20%.(20) Between 1980 and 1992 the
support price that Mexican farmers received for their corn dropped by
20%, while the amount of credit available for growing corn fell by
77%.(21) Massive unrest in Mexico and migration to the United States
are a result of this deepening poverty.

After independence in 1980, Zimbabwe introduced price supports for
corn and invested heavily in extension, marketing, credit services for
small farmers, and access to seeds and other supplies. Within five
years Zimbabwe was producing an exportable surplus, while the percent
of peasants selling corn rose from 10% to 60%. Nonetheless, the
forced opening of its market to imports proved to be costly for
Zimbabwe, according to Oxfam UK:

By the mid-1980s, the country had increased self-
sufficiency to the point where it had built up a
stockpile of maize from which it was able to export
to food-deficit neighbors. As the U.S.-European
Tfarm war’ intensified, however, maize imports
flooded into local markets at around half the
levels paid to Zimbabwean producers. By driving
down prices, these imports left Zimbabwe’s Grain
Marketing Board with a huge financial deficit and a
maize stockpile which, under World Bank advice, was
sold at a loss. The result: Zimbabwe was left
without a strategic food reserve when the 1992
drought struck, forcing the government to turn to
costly commercial imports food to avert a food
security crisis. There is little doubt that, if
freed from competition from subsidized maize
imports, Zimbabwe could again become a major
regional exporter... However, Zimbabwe will not
fulfill its agricultural potential in the face of
continued dumping by Europe and the USA.(22)

While increasing globalization of the world economy in the past half
century has left mostly casualties in its wake, there have been
exceptions. The post-World War II economic successes of Japan, South
Korea and Taiwan offer important insights. At the end of World War II,
each was as destitute as any Third World country is today. The key
policies that they needed to recover, centered around making the
peasantry the engine of economic development, through expensive
food policies that allowed farmers to receive high prices for their
produce. This was achieved by trade barriers against cheap subsidized
imports of agricultural products, combined with agrarian reform under
which nobody could possess more than three hectares of
farmland. Together these measures created a peasantry with the
purchasing power to live well,and as consumers, to sup port the
fledgling domestic industries that later became international
powerhouses.(23)

Though we might not wish to repeat other aspects of this TAsian
Model,’(24) we can take from it the lesson that investment in
the peasantry can lead to Tbubble-up’ economics to benefit the
entire society, rather than the failed Western concept of trickle-down
economics. Just as important, East Asia shows the merits of first
focusing on developing a strong domestic economy before opening to the
world economy.

MYTH: Food should be obtained wherever
it’s cheapest, even if that means subsidized imports FACT: Third World governments must
protect local food production and prioritize the creation of jobs in
rural areas

The issue of protection for farm prices in developing countries must
be reexamined. Even if it is cheaper, both for a country and its
consumers, to allow subsidized North America and European wheat and
corn to flow into an area, do such savings outweigh the costs to
society of the millions of people displaced from agriculture by such
Tdumping’ practices?(25) The lesson of East Asian agricultural
protectionism could be applied to today’s Third World countries
as a way to move them out of poverty. Tariff barriers cost a
government nothing, yet maintain fair prices for local farmers.

We also need to recognize that the penetration of capitalist business
relations into all but the remotest areas of the world means that the
rural poor now make as much income, or more, on off farm labor than
they do on farming. Typically a peasant’s plot is inadequate to
support a family, making it necessary to sells one’s labor as a
part-time plantation worker, often at well below minimum wage.

Development policies need to be geared toward creating more and better
rural employment opportunities. Processed farm products, for example,
obtain much higher prices than do raw agricultural commodities. Even
rudimentary communally-owned processing facilities can greatly
increase farmers’ profits, as well as provide needed off-farm
employment.(26)

MYTH: Agrarian reform is passe; where it’s been tried it
hasn’t worked FACT: Real agrarian reform is a necessary, but not
sufficient, step toward eliminating rural poverty and hunger

We have to reopen the issue of agrarian reform, which was in vogue for
much of the post-World War II period, but became taboo in the 80s. We
cannot continue to accept land tenure systems that allocate the vast
majority of good land to a few wealthy owners and relegate the vast
majority of the rural population to miserably small parcels of the
worst possible farmland. Not only is this an issue of social justice,
but redistribution can lead to increases in food production at lower
cost, as labor-intensive peasant multiple cropping systems produce
higher yields with fewer inputs than conventional systems on the same
land.(27)

For peasants farming desert edges in Africa and facing drought-induced
famines, birth control programs will not improve the situation. They
will still face famine because of uneven rainfall patterns. By the
same token food aid can only help temporarily, and in fact, it can
even drive people off the land as donated food drives local prices
below the cost of production for local farmers. Only agrarian reform
that gives the poor access to land with regular rainfall or irrigation
can make a difference. That is the bottom line for Africa, and for
everywhere else where the poor have been forced onto impossibly
marginal lands.

Even in Zimbabwe, success must be balanced against the failure to
proceed with redistribution. Oxfam UK reports that:

One million smallholder communal farms are [still]
restricted to half of the total area suitable for
agricultural production. The other half is occupied
by 4,500 commercial farmers, most of whom are
white. Moreover, the commercial farms are almost
all located in areas with prime land and assured
rainfall, while communal farms operate mainly in
drought-prone areas with poor soils. The grossly
unequal distribution of land explains why, despite
impressive gains in food production since the early
1980s, almost half a million rural families remain
vulnerable to malnutrition.(28)

We must learn from the mistakes of the past. The much heralded Latin
American agrarian reforms of the post- World War II period, which
moved peasants to remote areas to farm small plots of infertile land,
cut them off from markets and supportservices. It was inevitable that
such efforts would fail to reduce poverty. True agrarian reform must
redistribute quality land. But land alone does not make a successful
farmer. Global market participation is now unavoidable in most of the
Third World. To succeed, peasants must have credit, education,
extension services, and new marketing channels that give them a fair
chance to compete.(29)

Sustainable Rural Livelihoods

The benefit of an analysis that focuses on root causes is that we see
how the causes ofQand therefore the solutions toQpoverty, hunger,
rapid population growth, migration, and environmental destruction are
inter- related. It has been collapse of rural livelihoods over
centuries, accentuated in the 1980s and 90s, that produced this nexus
of problems. Thus the key task at hand is to create real and
sustainable livelihoods in rural areas. Three elements are necessary
for a viable alternative policy. These are:

managed integration into the world economy on
terms that give the poor a fair chance

agrarian reform

policies that promote fair prices and decent
employment

Change is Possible

China has only half as much cropped land as India,
yet Indians suffer widespread and severe hunger
while the Chinese do not. Sri Lanka has only half
the farmland per person of Bangladesh, yet when
effective government policies kept food affordable,
Sri Lankans were considerably better fed than
Bangladeshis. Costa Rica, with less than half of
Honduras’ cropped acres per person, boasts a life
expectancyQone indicator of nutritionQfourteen
years longer... And Cuba, which led the Third World
in life expectancy, low infant mortality rates, and
good nutrition [until the recent collapse of
relations with the ex-socialist bloc], has a
population density similar to Mexico’s, where
hunger is rampant.(30)

What all of these cases have in common is that the better-off
countries have instituted land reform and other policies aimed at
improving rural livelihoods. Zimbabwe also supported this thrust, as
progressive government policies made it possible to dramatically
increase food production. Nevertheless, steps still remain to be taken
toward greater agrarian reform and protection for Zimbabwean maize
producers.

The state of Kerala in India offers one final lesson. Average incomes
make it historically one of the poorest states in India, yet in 1991
literacy was 39% higher, life expectancy nine years longer, and infant
mortality and birth rates were 80% and 33% lower, respectively, than
the rest of India. Land reform, education for women and health care
for all contributed to this success. Grassroots organizations
including strong peasants’, workers’ and women’s
movements helped to keep the progressive governments that implemented
these policies in power.(31)

Because the basis of hunger is powerlessness, real change can only be
achieved by supporting grassroots movements for self-determination,
rather than continuing to prop up local elites and subsidize
transnational corporations. Thus our conclusion at Food First: it is
not a scarcity of food, but rather a scarcity of real democracy, that
keeps people hungry. The kind of changes we propose can only be
implemented following a redistribution of decision-making power. The
poor majority must have a say in determining how productive resources
are used. There must be a redistribution of the economic, social, and
political resources which make the exercise of such power
possible. This is the essence of democracyQparticipation in the
decisions which affect our lives. The corollary is that strong
grassroots movements can make a difference, when they, instead of
ruling elites, receive our support.

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